Lies America Told Me (and You)

Betrayed.

For quite some time, in fact since my undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania, I have felt that there was something deeply unsettling about America, something other than America’s persistent commitment to racial inequality. UPenn, despite its vaunted Ivy League reputation, failed to enlighten me. In fact, if anything, it compounded my confusion. 

Another motivator was the fact that 56% of young Americans in the 18–34-year-old demographic report as not being proud to be Americans. That number compared to 86% of Americans over 65 who did report as being proud to be Americans. I found this to be quite extraordinary and wondered if it was related to my own confusion and disillusionment with our country. I wondered whether there was a false narrative of America being peddled and if that narrative was being unraveled.

I am not a writer. However, I am an interested observer of people and events. Not being a writer, I naturally had a great deal of trepidation in attempting “Lies America Told Me (and You)”, but I overcame my hesitancy in what I hope is a spirit of civic mindedness. So, here it is, warts, imperfections and all.

I majored in political science, but Penn taught me nothing about politics and government. I studied economics, but they taught me Samuelson and nothing of Adam Smith, the father of economics. They taught me macroeconomics and microeconomics, but nothing of the beneficial effects of three hundred fifty years of free slave and Jim Crow labor in building the American economy. I took history classes that accepted manifest destiny and taught me nothing about Washington’s and Jefferson’s premeditated displacement and genocide of Native Americans.

What I have since come to understand is that UPenn and its celebrated Wharton School are committed to training the business class, those skilled bloodsuckers whom Adam Smith, the founder of economic science, labeled the Masters of Mankind. Smith said the Masters of Mankind practice the Vile Maxim—all for us, nothing for the rest. Smith said the Masters of Mankind suck the blood from society and the marrow from the bones. Wharton, like Harvard, Chicago and Stanford business schools in their all-consuming worship of predatory capitalism, taught none of this. UPenn and Wharton, like the rest of the academy, is complicit in perpetuating the destruction of the American working class. They train and unleash the hounds of predatory capitalism to prey on and devour the American people. The Wharton graduates, Smith’s Masters of Mankind, thrive on economic inequality.

Shame on the University of Pennsylvania.

When I came to understand this, I understood why the American people have never risen to universal prosperity. At times, the prosperity of the American people has risen, but generally the trend is downward, towards ever increasing income and wealth inequality. 

China initiated its first Five Year Plan in 1953. Today, poverty has effectively been eliminated in their country. While China was eliminating poverty, the American Dream died. Today, nearly seventy percent (70%) of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg obscenely own more wealth than the bottom 160,000,000 Americans. Homelessness is epidemic. Food insecurity plagues nearly twenty million Americans. Twenty-seven million Americans have no health insurance. Thirty-six million Americans live in poverty - one in ten adults, one in six children.

To me, this was diametrically opposed to America’s creeds of “liberty and justice for all.” No matter how hard Americans of any color strove, worked and sacrificed, Horatio Alger remained a myth. For 250 years economic inequality has never been attained, it has always been a goal that constantly retreated. So, if America’s creeds are true, if America is a land of opportunity in which there is liberty and justice for all, how can China have conquered its poverty in seventy years, and America’s has worsened over the same period? Something was not adding up. Was that shining city on the hill, the land of opportunity and of milk and honey real…or was it a cruel illusion? Things are so bad in America that white folks have taken to the streets in a No Kings movement.

So, I went back to the roots of America and beyond to review the historical record. I did something that UPenn failed to do, and eventually I began to understand. I began to understand why America was incapable of delivering on her creeds, and why UPenn specifically, and the academy in general, are complicit in America’s criminality by failing to educate on the truth of America. What I discovered is shocking, unnerving, and premeditated. The people of America live in a fantasyland. They sleepwalk through life in a haze of disinformation and brainwashed propaganda. They sense there is a disconnect between what they want America to be and what it is. What their lives are and what they should be.

 Adam Smith long ago warned us of who the real enemies of the people are. Your enemies, he said, are the Masters of Mankind, the plutocrats, bloodsucking vampires, and they crave every drop of your blood. Two thousand years before Smith were Aristotle and Plato. They argued that wealth-based rule by plutocrats or oligarchs was very unstable and fundamentally unjust; that rule by the wealthy degraded the important middle class. Why did the foremost philosophers of ancient Greece believe that? Because, they said rule by the wealthy defeats the purpose of the state – the pursuit of virtue and common good. Two virtues which the United States has ever evidenced a desire to attain. In slogans and creeds maybe, but never in policy. American governmental policy has always been to eschew the common good and virtue and to esteem greed, profit, and self-gratification. 

And thus, this book, Lies America Told Me (and You).

 I have concluded that the American people in general and African Americans specifically have all been the victims of a grand betrayal. A grand betrayal that dates to the nation’s colonization (1619) and its founding on July 4, 1776. 

Buckle up, it is going to be a bumpy, demoralizing, but necessary ride. America can possibly be saved once its deceit and deception have been outed. But those who own it and control it will not surrender their entitlement and privilege easily. The Masters of Mankind have been running the most successful “long con” in history and are now firmly entrenched. Whether they will be forced to finally deliver equality and justice for all is up to the American people. But I tell you this as Adam Smith said: Your enemies are bloodsucking vampires, and they crave every drop of your blood. Both Plato and Aristotle agreed. America faces an existential threat, and the hour is late. Even if you awaken to the truth of your situation, it may be too late.

One thing is true – at this late date only truth can possibly save America.

Time will tell.